Insights from website usability testing

Our consultants Dave and Pete from iFactory were on campus again this week, conducting usability testing on the current website. They asked several people representing major audiences of the site to perform a series of tasks and asked them to talk through their thought process as they clicked links and viewed different pages. The audiences included prospective students, current students, residents, basic-science and clinical faculty, staff, patients and members of the community.

For example, testers were asked to describe:

Under what link did they expect to find certain information?

What did they think if they didn’t find what they were looking for?

Did they try another link, or use the search feature, or abandon the task?

Pete commented that it’s fascinating to watch people think and listen to their reasoning for where and how they expect information to be displayed on web pages. The testing, as well as the exercise of preparing tasks for the testers, gave iFactory a better understanding of the audiences of the EVMS website and their needs and goals, which will inform the next phase: information architecture and wireframe development.